Student’s Cheese Grater Inspired Award Winning Design

An award winning Sheffield College art student has issued an appeal to businesses to help her launch a novel city souvenir.

Pictured: Sheffield College student Kim Kay with her cheese grater design inspired by the city’s landmark car park known by the same name.

Kim Kay, 43, has designed a cheese grater that looks just like the city’s iconic car park on Charles Street, in Sheffield city centre, affectionately known by the same name to locals.

Kim came up with the kitchen utensil idea for a Sheffield Design Week 2016 competition, which she won. The brief was to design a city souvenir, reflecting the industry, personality and craft of Sheffield.

Now she has launched an appeal for designers and businesses to help her develop the idea further so that it can go into production.

She said: “I’m delighted to win. At first, when I had the cheese grater inspired souvenir idea, I thought it was too obvious. But Sheffield is a city built on steel, and so it had to be a steel souvenir. Now I’m hoping to get the design into production.

"The feedback has been consistently positive with people saying they love the idea and would buy one for their kitchen. I’ve started approaching product design and business experts in the city in the hope of finding the right Yorkshire business to manufacture the cheese grater," added Kim.

Kim is currently completing a UAL Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at The Sheffield College’s Hillsborough campus on Livesey Street. Kim has also successfully completed a one-year Access to Higher Education (University) in Art and Design course at the College. Visit https://www.sheffcol.ac.uk/courses/access-to-university-course or call 0114 2602600.

She decided to return to education after suffering a serious knee injury whilst skiing in Austria last year; an injury that required major surgery and two years of treatment and exercises to recover from. The injury forced Kim to stop sport, including ice skating and running, and her successful public relations career. Instead, she began to explore a passion for art.

Kim explained: “Returning to education has changed my life. It required some adjustment but I soon got into the swing of the course and the college atmosphere. To anyone wishing to change to a different line of work my advice is, just enrol and turn up.

“I could not have imagined what I would have achieved in the past year. Thanks to the great teaching staff, I have developed a strong range and body of work and experimented with different mediums. I now look forward to the future with excitement.”

Kim has launched various exhibitions of her work and has been commissioned. The cheese grater is her latest design. Her ambition is to have a successful art business with a portfolio of art, design, illustration, licensing and commission work. For more information and to get in touch with Kim, visit http://www.inspirebykim.com/

Heather Smith, Principal, The Sheffield College, said: “I am very proud of Kim’s achievements and absolutely love her design. As a College we say that we transform lives through learning and this certainly seems to be the case here. Our art and design courses are built around exciting, relevant real-life projects and prepare students very well for their future career. I wish Kim all the best for what I am sure will be a successful future.”